More Quests

Or wait for each Release and do the content that is added in that Release until Episode 2.

Once you finish the main storyline quest and the other side quests, then congratulations, you are now into MMOG/UO/Sandbox mode where what you do each playtime is entirely up to you.

 

Weeel if you need someone leading you at the hand and making all the descisions for you, maybe WoW is more your venue....

 

Wait... you quoted one of my posts stating that I AVOID the quests because I find the experience completely horrible... and you're proposing that I do more quests? I'm disappointed by your response.

I've tolerated the 3 Paths twice already. I did them a second time because @Lord British himself suggested that we should give it another try, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Let's just conclude that he and I have different quality standards.

If you didn't figure it out already, I'm doing everything that I possibly can to enjoy this game. Otherwise I wouldn't bother spending my time in Reddit and Forums talking about the game. That's why I'm staying away from questing. That's why I spectate as many E.V.L. PvP tournaments as I can (which are now sadly nothing more than AoE-fests despite being 1-on-1 fights) and that, most of the time, I'm running around aimlessly killing monsters. I have to stay away from the horrible stuff and do the things that the game is mildly competent at. I'd gank people in Blood Bay but the way I want to play my character makes it impossible for me to compete in PvP. Changes in R55 and beyond might help... but questing still isn't one of them.

Even if I did bother to complete all of quests you listed above, what difference does it make? How does that change that I'd rather they focus on quality? I'm expected to eat off a plate but they're not washing the plates properly... I can see the grime!

I'm sure they'll fix the bugs in due time but that's the least of our concerns. Pacing and conveyance are curial elements desperately out of tune, here.

You know, I didn't think that having meaningful PvP and quests (including everything else he listed) counted as "hand holding"...

 

PvP. get real, the decision to mix pve and pvp population never really worked out, you can not proper balance if the two are involved (or you have to jump through loops switching rule sets depending on opponent and so on, open doors wide for trolling, need to jump through extra loops to prevent trolling, trolls are very good at finding new loopholes and so on, one of the reasons i do not see myself as an longtime resident of Sota. PvP and PvE does not mix, booth subgroups of players have vastly different playstyles and expect vastly different things, plus there temperaments do not mix, add fumbling attempts from portalarium to nudge players into pvp and so on, it is quit annoying and propably I will have enough of it and ditch the game.

Quests. Yes they are sucky. Sota works on them, new UI and the underlying architecture is bugged so much they admit they need to build it new.
It is an small team with limited ressources so it will take time, no one likes to wait i get it. Me either, i hate waiting.

But overall you sound upset that Sota is not polished the way you want, that the game does not cater to your playstyle the way an game from an big company would (few do to anyone)
That you have to find your own ways to amuse yourself.

And that is what i do not get, Sota allows very much freedom to make your own amusements.

Are there things to improve?

Tons of, but the game as is allows much freedom to make your own.

Aside from the silly intent to mix pvp and pve players I think it is on an good path, who will propably take a long time due to crowdfounding and therefore (compared to big companies) very small funds.

 

Oh, by Mondain's stones. Okay.

Well, It makes the game a little bit deeper and more meaningful. At least for me.

Anyway.... Nothing I'm gonna be able to say is gonna make a whit of difference, so as you were.

 

How does any of this relate to your comment about hand-holding and suggesting that @Halfwitte should look into WoW?

They’ll be working on the fundamentals for Episode 2. Assuming they’ll eventually come around to do that (and I’m optimistic enough to believe that they do), why would we want more quests for Episode 1 before we get to that point?

Because that is the crux of the conversation, isn’t it: Someone suggesting that Portalarium should work on more quests before they fix all of current ones.

This “new UI” you’re referring to is essentially (as of this writing) a darker reskin of what we already have. If Scotty's words are anything to go by (if you watched last friday's stream ~ yes, I care enough to watch them), he's not doing much of anything that'll affect how the UI works or how the UI is being drawn. I'm waiting for tangible changes in the functionality of the UI but, even if we're just talking about how the UI looks, so far the proposal isn't doing anything to change what people (not me) have been complaining about: a soul-less square UI gold border.

The only thing that makes me upset is Portalarium's apparent "meh, good enough" attitude because they couldn't fit one of the game's biggest selling points into their priorities during 4 years of development. I don't believe I'm asking for anything too out of the ordinary.

 

Except that it's been 5 years. And I agree.

To empasize the point, in some quests, they obviously didn't even bother to run the spell-checker. I think most Shroud players are more sandbox-oriented and just want quests for the rewards they offer. As long as you can get there, it's ok.

Quality of dialogue, character development, story, setting, pacing, etc., doesn't seem to matter to many who are left...

 

For the record: I never was implying that more quests should be Port's number 1 priority. Fixing broken quests and bugs should always be at the top of their "to do" list. I'd just like to see more quests.

 

Building the server (using unity but still) making the assets, developing and implementing the fight systhem, crafting, and so on takes big houses years too, and they do it with an much bigger budget and more people.
It is an rather big project, I would be surprised if they did more.

Then, redesigning the UI, that where examples about what they do, As much i understood it will be not only graphical, we see...
Just played a little WoW (first time) to get perspective, and I have to say the way Sota is made has taken for sure more workalready the state it is in.
Offcourse WoWs quest sythem works, the texts are spellchecked and so on, but they are running much longer and come from an big house.. so...

I think you are overestimating how much an small team like Sota has can do in a given time period.

 

I understand the point, but it's been made for the last five years every time people start to evaluate components of the game, and probably will be forever. However, many companies usually fall victim to overpromising and underdelivering. No one is expecting anything except what Port said they were going to be able to accomplish.

Here are the things that could be done easily that would hardly impact the budget yet contribute substantially to quality:
1. Use a spell-checker, or better, an automated editor like AutoCrit or Grammarly.
2. Establish standards for how quests operate (e.g., where dialogue choices will be used, how NPC's can be attacked, or always including keywords with locations that NPC's mention as part of a quest) So many aspects that need to be standardized!
3. Set up dialogue review by players in an easy and efficient way, like Darkstarr does with the release instructions. In-game testing and bug reporting is too tedious to attract many testers. There are many who would not mind the spoilers and would check for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and lore consistency while leaving the creative content up to Port. Post it in the forum in a spoiler section and clean it up before it goes in game!
4. Slow down implementation of quests so that when one is released, it showcases the game well. If you need more quests to keep people playing (I doubt quest content is a critical factor for keeping many in SotA at the momenr though), keep them simple.
5. Simplify the explanations in the journal, the verbosity makes it cumbersome and contains a lot of errors. Get rid of the difficulty estimations.
6. Establish names/identification for an entire quest, not just individual steps.
7. Provide just one sentence of additional explanation when a new character or group or location is mentioned that is a key part of the story. For example, in Aerie, the order of truth quest explains nothing about what the order of truth was and you talk to its last surviving member! Another example, you hear that Aerie has a Lord Marshal, and so where is he? He's not in the castle. Just say he's out on a mission somewhere. Small bits can connect the dots and help deepen the story.
8. Make it a rule that you never hint at anything that a character doesn't have a chance to find out somewhere. For example, the Lord Macsen quest in Aerie, or the Venatus quest - they are each on a mission that you participate in, but don't end up fully having the chance to understand.
9. Stop overpromising - this happened just last summer when the storylines were supposed to be "complete" and they are still being tweaked.

For too many things the time has passed; for example, deciding early on what mechanics you need to support questing so they are integrated. Now they are being kludged together from what happened to get build to support other aspects of the game to try to make things work. But they will be important to consider for Episode 2 if it can get off the ground.

 

@By Tor - here are the list of all the quests described in the Release Instructions:

• [12] Banner Quests: https://redd.it/8itxnh
• [15] Virtue Armor: https://redd.it/8flgqi
• [3] Companion Gear: https://redd.it/8pgvzi
• [11] Three-Day Blessings: https://redd.it/8qbcq5
• [45] All the Rest: https://redd.it/8qb8x8

 

Well something that did take me a long time in my job to learn was telling people that I have not the foggiest how long that and this will take (offcourse you would love to but it is just not possible, because as soon you start stuff happens and every remotely sane planning goes straight out of the window).
Trust me, it took me a loooong time.

I have no idea why they did not kick that habit by now but it is an habit hard to free yourself from.

Regarding the other points, I am not that privy onto what keeps them from doing as you suggest, like having people from outside proofread, or how to make quests, I have offcourse many ideas that would improve it, like bigger friggin text because i am not that good at reading it as is, but then i am not an game programmer...

Bethesda takes about 5 years to make an game in average and they are kinda sucky on the quests too, with an bigger team on it though, so i think that comes out about right. (but at least they know how to put bows into games, nudgenudgehinthint Portalarium)

 

And for my two cents, I think what Portalarium should actually do is focus on a secure tool that can allow players so obviously passionate about questing like @Vyrin to actually go in, view, and do corrections of dialogue and typographical errors.

Something like a revision control system that would allow folks like Vyrin to establish credentials, submit changes, which folks like Lum could then either diff to view changes, rollback, or approve.

This could also be used if at some point Portalarium wanted to add markup like boldface, italics, typesize, justification, etc. to the quest dialogue.

(My biggest issue is I cannot read the bland typeface without any formatting -- getting too old!)

Focusing on this tool could pay big dividends as we move forward.

Crowdsourcing the music for this game was very successful, in my opinion.

I encourage crowdsourcing the quest dialogue!

 

As long as it's simple and not dependent on any paritcular players, but players at large. Some players get into things and want to establish elaborate organizations of control, others would want to try to venture into creative control. Port has to be careful with a lot of over-enthusiasm. That's why I promote the example of the release instructions. No one controls it except the devs, the devs decide on what they accept, it's not dependent on any particular player, and all that's required is a forum post. All I want is a more efficient way for anyone to provide spelling, grammar, punctuation, consistency, and lore checks. The sad part is that this would save so much time (and time = money) versus the current bug reporting system, but Port probably fears the players who would take advantage of the system to try to tell them what the content should be rather than just provide editing help.

Until that happens, I will continue my wall of text feedback posts as I can and figure out how in the world I am going to get all of it into bug reports. It's a discouraging system and for Port, really inefficient crowd sourcing.

 

@Pounce That's what priorities are for.

I remember them telling us during live-streams that they were holding out on building quests because they didn't have the tools for them... something must've really gone wrong because here we are with quests that are haphazardly put together, either that... or questing was never prioritized in the first place.

And before Richard Garriott chimes in to talk about the story, I'm not talking about story... I'm talking about how it's being executed.

Spoiler

There are multiple occasions during the Path of Courage where characters congregate talk to one another in the throne room and it's a perfect example of shoddy work.

Or there are the many instances in the Path of Love where the dialogue gives the impression that Samael is supposed to be taking a journey with us... but half the time he's just magically there.

That's not a budget or team size issue.

I'm not expecting tripple-A quality, here; I just want them to put more care and attention when implementing quests. What we have now highlights complacency.

Fair enough.

 

Due to the MMO aspect of this game and how it has evolved, players want things to do, tasks to do, achievements to do. So for example things like:

Perhaps titles earned give a buff and yo can change out them as needed. Perhaps achievements offer points toward earning special items such as cotos as you complete achievements such as climbing to the top of every mountain and the game notifies you.

Perhaps you earn points toward a special fishing pole, a special mount when they come in, and a special boat when boating comes in. And dailies such as fishing quests (when we get fishing updates) perhaps give special bait that is hard to get and needed and changes daily

Perhaps crafting quests give special crafting component once a day, like the butcher needs you to do something for him or the cook needs you to craft some special foods for them. (please don't make these just for new player quests) Dailies are for everyone if we make it so.

 

You have to be careful with that as you don't want to be in a situation where players will opt to use their materials in favour of NPCs instead of trading with other players.

"No, I'm not going to group with you, I get less XP this way!" will turn into: "No, I'm not going to craft you a sword, I need the mats for my daily!"

 

The tailor crafting tutorial quest is pretty good - hopefully they can expand to other professions - blacksmith, cooking, etc.

Also Bulk order Deeds.

 

Can you *imagine* the melter Chris will have trying to balance all those quest rewards - especially any buffs. All these potential additions... poor Chris.